August 4, 2023

Thomas Jefferson was no fan of newspapers but, when asked about choosing between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, famously answered that he would not hesitate to choose the latter. His observation reflected two things. Firstly, and obviously, newspapers were the dominant medium of his day and, secondly, he profoundly suspected government and, therefore, saw newspapers as a check on unfettered power. Today’s social media, though, would give him pause, for it is the government’s ally, not its watcher.

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In recent months, thanks to Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter Files, the Facebook documents that the Judiciary Committee obtained, and other damning social media discoveries, we now know that the White House (aka The Democrat Party) and an assortment of governmental agencies have persistently exerted heavy influence, including monetary payoffs, to control information on social media. Subpoenaed documents from other firms like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are supposed to be forthcoming and may reveal more.

We finally are having confirmed those suspicions that Democrats (including social media) have for years denounced as conspiracy theories. Yes, there was shadow banning; yes, Russians were not overwhelming us with disinformation; and yes, people were being deplatformed, censored, and locked out of their accounts. But just how big of a deal is this?

To answer that question, you first must have a handle on social media’s significance and influence overall. Few Americans do, believing this is just another iteration of media evolution.

Image by Freepik.

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Over the centuries and decades, the balance of power has shifted amongst various media (e.g., in-person speeches, newspapers, books, theater, radio, magazines, billboards, television, movies, etc.) While newspapers may have been the dominant medium in Jefferson’s day, they were not pervasive. A relatively small portion of the population had access to them, and word of mouth still represented a powerful competitor.

As this pervasiveness escalated, so did the emergence of alternative media—radio and then television—keeping that power balance somewhat in check. However, since the advent of the internet, particularly over the last decade, the significance of virtually all other media has been diminished dramatically by a new competitor—the digital leviathan.

Whether the digital format is audio, video, news websites, advertising, or social media, it is expanding as old-world media have been relegated to niche or dying. Pew tells us that more than 8 in 10 U.S. adults now get their news digitally from their smartphone, computer, or tablet—far more than any other format.

Okay, but isn’t social media merely one of the many influential digital channels impacting information flow and opinion formation? Well, not quite. More accurately, it is the 800 pound-gorilla in a rapidly shrinking cage.

Since the advent of the smartphone, social media has absolutely exploded, with American usage rocketing from 5% in 2005 to over 70% today. Some estimates indicate that as much as 38% of all internet time today is devoted to social media. Part of the reason for the meteoric rise is that access to information is as simple as reaching in your pocket. It is estimated that Americans now spend about one-third of their waking hours on their mobile phones—about 4.1 hours per day—with 7 of every 10 minutes spent on social media.

Facebook, which also owns two other surging social media firms (Instagram and WhatsApp), remains the social media king, commanding 53% of all usage. The statistics regarding adoption rates, minutes of use, and influence is mind numbing. In his meticulously researched book, The Four, Scott Galloway calls Facebook “the most successful thing in the history of humankind.” Seventy-four percent of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users visit the site daily, and more than half of them visit it several times per day.